Wednesday, October 12, 2016

There is some disquiet at the seriously low turnout at the local-body elections and some rather disturbing solutions for a problem that in reality does not exist.

living as we do in a stable benign social environment it is easy to understand why the right to vote is casually discarded by so many for so many reasons. Until the right to vote without any endangerment is curtailed or threatened then little will change and idle talk of solutions such as postal, electronic, compulsion, and this morning I heard somewhere an even greater idiocy, pay a reward for voting.

If casting a free vote at a polling booth is too much trouble then those who cant be arsed will be disenfranchised and we will be ruled by the votes of those who care. Winston Churchill once said democracy is not without fault but when compared to all other systems, may be the best.
We get the governance we deserve and if a vote is not worth the bother of actually making the effort to exercise it then it is probably discounted to the point of worthless anyway.

Personally I am far more concerned at the truely appalling quality of candidate so often confronting the voter, maybe a serious look at the way Palmer has screwed the scrum as to what an elected official can actually achieve in the face of an overpaid beaurocracy, so many one issue pressure groups and race based adhoc hurdles placed in the path of good governance from duly elected representatives of the citizenry.

2 comments:

Noel
said...

In Local body elections there is probably a reasonable sized group of the opinion "regardless of who I vote for my rates are going to increase so why bother" along with another group of "my past experience with councils is that they don't really give a toss for my opinion".

In my experience local body politicians fall into three groups. Possibly the largest group are those who go there determined to make a difference; they are essentially genuine people trying to do good as they see it. Some succeed, some fail. The second group are the troughers who are there to eat their lunch and pick up their stipend ... not unusual to see them on multiple authorities. The third group those who got there by accident, are bewildered by the system are remain so throughout their tenure.

It really used to get up my goat as a CEO to have elected members turn up at a Council meeting with the brown envelope containing their agenda papers unopened and then proceed to read them and put up their hand to ask a stupid question on a matter that had already been put to the vote.